the lazy, inactive passivity, the timid submission.--Who was ever free?


51

When we examine the history of philology it is borne in upon us how few
really talented men have taken part in it. Among the most celebrated
philologists are a few who ruined their intellect by acquiring a
smattering of many subjects, and among the most enlightened of them were
several who could use their intellect only for childish tasks. It is a
sad story · no science, I think, has ever been so poor in talented
followers. Those whom we might call the intellectually crippled found a
suitable hobby in all this hair-splitting.


52

The teacher of reading and writing, and the reviser, were the first
types of the philologist.


53

Friedrich August Wolf reminds us how apprehensive and feeble were the
first steps taken by our ancestors in moulding scholarship--how even the
Latin classics, for example, had to be smuggled into the university
market under all sorts of pretexts, as if they had been contraband
goods. In the "Gottingen Lexicon" of 1737, J. M. Gesner tells us of the
Odes of Horace: "ut imprimis, quid prodesse _in severioribus studiis_
possint, ostendat."